A.Word.A.Day --Gallio

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Nov 17, 2025

This week’s theme
Eponyms

This week’s words
Gallio

Gallio and Paul

Illustration: Jim Padgett / FreeBibleimages

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Adverbs

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

The English language has thousands of eponyms, words coined after people, real or fictional, who have, for better or worse, made a name for themselves.

Think sandwich (after Earl of Sandwich, who was too busy gambling to put down his cards for lunch) and Machiavellian (after Niccolò Machiavelli, who could have written The Art of the Steal).

Still, as a percent of the human population, earning an eponym is exceedingly rare. It’s like linguistic immortality, but not always the flattering kind. The latest, and rather grim, candidate for this honor is the Kavanaugh stop.

The honorable Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in a recent ruling, found it no problemo for officials to racially profile people based on skin color or language. (Above the Law)

Welcome to the new United States of America, where every morning millions of school kids pledge allegiance to “liberty and justice for all” and by afternoon learn there’s a constitutional asterisk.

Only time will tell whether this eponym takes root in the lexicon, as other infamous ones, such as Benedict Arnold, Quisling, and Judas have. Meanwhile, this week we’ll look at five eponyms that have firmly become a part of the English language.

Gallio

PRONUNCIATION:

(GAL-ee-oh)

MEANING:

noun: One who is indifferent or uncaring.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Junius Annaeus Gallio Annaeanus, a Roman senator, noted for refusing to intervene in a dispute. Earliest documented use: 1850. Adjective: gallionic.

NOTES:

Acts 18:12-17 (KJV) recounts how Gallio declined to judge a quarrel over “words and names” and “cared for none of those things.” Gallio was the original meh-gistrate. Today, if he were replying by email, he’d have simply said, “Not my circus, not my monkeys.” If texting: 🤷🏼

Not to be confused with Galileo who cared a lot about revolutions. Gallio? Not so much, planetary or political.

USAGE:

“Mrs. MacHugh was a Gallio at heart ... who disregarded great questions; who cared little or nothing what people said of her; who considered nothing worth the trouble of a fight.”
Anthony Trollope; He Knew He Was Right; Strahan and Co.; 1869.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

We are a landscape of all we have seen. -Isamu Noguchi, sculptor and architect (17 Nov 1904-1988)

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